credits him. "At this time," says Plutarch (Alexander, xlvi), "most writers say that the Queen of the Amazons paid a visit to Alexander, of whom are Cleitarchus and Onesicritus. But Ptolemy and Aristobulus say that this is fiction." Cleitarchus therefore followed Onesicritus in preference to Ptolemy and Aristobulus, and of Onesicritus, thanks to Lucian, we can form a sure estimate.
Just after the great Indian campaign against Porus and his elephants, and while Alexander and his army were descending the Hydaspes in their extemporized flotilla, a certain historian, so Lucian tells us (Quom. hist, scrib., xii), bent on flattery, read aloud to Alexander what he had written about a fierce duel between Alexander in person and the gigantic Porus mounted on an elephant. Now we have in Arrian what is substantially Ptolemy's account of the battle with Porus, and there neither was nor could have been at any time during the battle a duel between Porus and Alexander. But just as at Issus and Arbela romantic historians insist, against all the facts, on bringing Darius and Alexander into personal combat, so in the struggle with Porus the flattering historian thought that the two leaders must have their Homeric duel. Here we can put our finger on Alexander-romance in the very making. As the historian read aloud to Alexander, thinking to gratify the king by inventing the most fabulous exploits for him, Alexander caught away the writing from him and hurled it into the river, saying, "I ought to do the same to you, my man, for fighting such a duel and killing such elephants for me with a single javelin." This historian, as we learn from another passage in the same work of Lucian (chap, xl), was Onesicritus, the Munchausen of Alexander's companions. And it is in all probabihty his version of the visit of the Amazonian queen to Alexander which Arrian mentions as "reported" (vii. 13, 3), only to remark: "but this is recorded neither by Ptolemy nor Aristobulus, nor by any one else capable of testimony in such
